Excerpt from: Making Special Education Actually Work (click for full article)
Rendering effective mental health services to students in special education who have ASDs and need mental health services in order to benefit from their IEPs can be done cost-effectively. It requires that the right combination of expertise and skill assembled for each student’s treatment team. It also requires well-designed mental and behavioral health treatment plans that include detailed descriptions of how the skills taught in therapy will be generalized to natural settings such as the classroom, playground, cafeteria, or school bus. The treatment team would need to function like a well-oiled machine, each complementing the work of the other.
The savings to society of doing it right would far exceed the costs of delivering a successful program. More importantly, there are just some aspects of independence upon which no dollar value can be placed. To be supported in becoming as independent as possible by one’s fellow citizens affords some of our most compromised citizens access to their Constitutional liberties, and that’s something of which one can be proud to be a part.
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